Video Game / Smite

Welcome to the TV Tropes Article Description. Featuring Smite, the 3rd-Person MOBA with Mythological Gods

Smite: Battleground of the Gods is a MOBA game from Hi-Rez Studios, makers of Tribes Ascend— specifically, their Titan Forge division. Unlike most other MOBA games, Smite is played in third person view using WASD movement, instead of the classic isometric perspective popularized by DOTA and its other derivatives. Instead of heroes or champions, the players in Smite control gods from various mythological pantheons, like Greek, Egyptian, Chinese, etc. Like in almost all MOBA games, it takes place on a map of three lanes, defended by towers that have regular waves of NPC Mooks running down them. The objective of the player is to help these "Mooks" destroy the enemy towers and eventually their base (or Titan in this case) while preventing the enemy team from doing the same. Players gain gold and experience for killing NPCs and enemy gods which they respectively use to buy new items and level up to improve their abilities. Smite, however, includes several other game modes that deviate from the standard formula.

• Conquest: The aforementioned standard game mode.
• Assault: A spin-off of the standard game mode "ARAM (All Random All Mid)" seen in others MOBAs, where in players take randomly selected gods and go in only one lane and have one chance to buy items at the shop after spawning, being unable to heal up from it or buy again until after death and respawn.
• Arena: A deathmatch-like game mode with a twist. The teams have a pool of 500 tickets. You deduct the enemies' tickets by killing their players (5 tickets), killing an enemy minion or escorting your minion to the enemy portal (1 ticket and you have to last hit it for the first), and escorting your Arena Juggernaut to the enemy portal (15 tickets, only appears when your team earns 10 kill counts (and 20, 30 and so on)). If a minion reaches the enemy's portal at their spawn they further deduct a ticket. This rewards pushing and aggressive play whereas a pure deathmatch rewards fighting next to your spawn.
• Joust: A 1v1 or 3v3 Conquest-like game mode. It features a one-lane map that, unlike Assault, has sides with neutral NPCs. Unique to the mode is the Bull Demon King, a boss that both grants a buff and temporarily disables the closest enemy structure.
• Siege: A variant of 4v4 Conquest, with two lanes and a jungle between them. Scoring kills gives your side progress towards spawning a powerful Siege Juggernaut, which is very effective against Towers and Phoenixes. A second one can be spawned by killing a Wild Juggernaut in the middle of the map. Each base also has a portal that can be used to teleport to a friendly Juggernaut.
• Clash: A 5v5 variant of Conquest, with two lanes and a notably large amount of open space at the center. It is intended to serve as a middle-ground between Conquest and Arena. After a certain period of time, the buff camp in the center is replaced with Apophis, a boss that is tougher but grants a more substantial team-wide buff.
• Match of the Day (MotD): An exhibition match mode where you play on any game mode with a certain special theme to it, from everyone starting with more gold than they could ever use and all random gods, to playing only as lightning-themed gods.
• Domination: A control-point based game mode similar to the Battlefield series' conquest mode. Teams have a pool of tickets, and controlling more points out of the three on the map than the enemy team causes their tickets to drain until they run out and are defeated. Killing enemy players deducts one ticket per kill as well. This mode was eventually removed but left as a MotD choice, before getting removed entirely.
• Adventures: A collection of limited-time game modes, notable in how they deviate away from traditional MOBA gameplay. They include the following:
  • Xing Tian's Mountain: A 5-player PvE gauntlet where the team must survive a series of challenges as long as they can. It actually predates Adventures, but serves as a Spiritual Predecessor.
  • Fafnir's Wonderland: A Christmas-themed reskin of the above with harder challenges. It also predates Adventures.
  • Nike's Valley of Victory: A 5v5 Capture the Flag mode. Teams are restricted to 5 specific gods (Hercules, Anubis, Artemis, Loki, and Ymir), and win by either scoring 5 points or by having more points when time runs out.
  • Apollo's Racer Rumble: An 8-player Mascot Racer. Players can choose one of 8 gods and race on two different tracks. Gameplay is typical for the genre, though notably there is no accelerate button, with all of the karts driving forward automatically.
  • Trials of King Hercules: A 3-player PvE gauntlet structured like an MMORPG adventure, where you defeat tons of monsters and very tough bosses inbetween. You can earn an Adventure-only money to collect items to use there. You start out at Level 20, but cannot buy any items except those you collected for this mode.

The game is Free-to-Play and was released for Windows on March 25, 2014. It has adopted a similar model to League of Legends, with a weekly rotation of gods that can be played by anyone and the option to permanently unlock them with in-game currency earned by either playing or paying. It also has the "Ultimate God Pack", a one-time purchase of all current and upcoming gods.

An Xbox One version was released August 19, 2015, and a PS4 version was released May 31, 2016. A Mac version of the game was released on July 7, 2016, and a Nintendo Switch version released on February 18th, 2019.

A Mascot Fighter spinoff, Divine Knockout, was released on December 6, 2022. Billed as the "world's only 3D Platform Fighter", players took control of one of 13 of Smite's gods and fought to knock opponents of a 3D stage while completing objectives. Despite favorable reviews it struggled to retain players and on January 13, 2024, it was revealed to have ceased active development (though will still remain online for the foreseeable future).

A sequel, titled Smite 2, was announced on January 12, 2024. With the sequel, Titan Forge intends to transfer the previously Unreal Engine 3-bound gameplay of the original Smite into Unreal Engine 5 with redone visuals and some gameplay tweaks. However, they promise that the original Smite will remain active for the foreseeable future. It will be available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

An official comic has now been made providing the game with a story. It can be found here.

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Smite provides examples of:

• Ancient Grome: For the Greek and Roman pantheons, it's confirmed in both Cupid's and Discordia's lore that the Greek and Roman gods are the same gods and that they were just known by different names by the Romans and Greeks. Hercules, Bacchus, and Cupid are counted amongst the Roman Pantheon rather than the Greek. Lores of the Roman Pantheon use the Roman name (Jupiter, Juno, etc) rather than Greek name (except Cupid's and Discordia's lore; they say that Aphrodite, Ares, and Zeus are Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, respectively, while Discordia's lore calls her Eris). Zeus didn't have much to say to Hercules, while Aphrodite didn't have much to say to Cupid (her son, Eros) and Vulcan (her husband, Hephaestus).
  • Over time, this trope starts to take effect: post visual update, Hercules refers Zeus as 'father' when the former kills the latter. Also one of the 'Match of the Day' is themed around the shaky marriage of Vulcan (Roman) and Aphrodite (Greek). And then flipped again when Vulcan gets his directed taunt on beating Aphrodite: He says she just reminds him of Venus (although, on Cupid's lore, it's confirmed that Aphrodite is Venus, possibly meaning he was just being sarcastic). And then flipped again when Nox, a Roman Goddess, refers to Thanatos as her offspring (he really was Nyx's son) and warning Zeus, not Jupiter, about not going out of control again. Then confirmed once more by Discordia's lore, which says that she was known as Eris by the Greeks and became known as Discordia after she got to Rome, Zeus is also called as Jupiter by Khepri in his Dark Matter skin. Also being even further confirmed as Hera, in her lore-related skin, refers to Vulcan as her son and treats Bellona as a incompetent child.
  • It was recently confirmed by Ajax that the Greek/Roman counterparts only differ in name and slight changes in their appearance, and that while Greek and Roman Pantheon are 2 different pantheons because of two different cultures, they are the same group of gods.
• Announcer Chatter: Quite a lot of it, The regular announcer announces the deaths of gods, team wipes, turrets being under attack or falling, in addition to voicing all of the voice commands for the game. However, you can buy a voice pack for a god which switches the announcer in voice commands for the god you're playing as.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: There are a lot of these in the Greek and Roman pantheons. There’s Nox (night) and her three playable children Thanatos (death), Discordia (strife) and Nemesis (retribution), along with Terra (earth), Nike (victory) and Chronos (time).
• Apocalypse How: It's implied by the gradually changing visuals of the Conquest, Seige, and Assaults maps that the battle between the gods has managed to trigger every Pantheon's version of the end of the world at once. In Assault's case especially, the red team is actively working towards hastening Ragnarok.
• April Fools' Day: On April Fools day itself, the mode of the day was a "glitch" mode, you could get any god in any game mode and anything could happen, from having no cooldowns to being invincible to one-shotting everyone. Even the Admins got in on the fun, randomly jumping into the map as a fifty foot tall Cupid, or turning into the map objectives to beat on players.
• Art Evolution: Domination went from being Ancient Grome to being based off of Ancient Egypt. Many of the older character models got touched up as well. Guan Yu, Sun Wukong, and Kali are special in that they also got kit reworks to go along with the new visuals.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI for the conquest 1v1, 3v3, and arena 5v5 Bot games aren't very advanced, making the mode more suited to grasping abilities and working on builds than being challenged. These include, but aren't limited to:
  • The AI's pathing isn't great, and they really dislike going into the jungle. If you use an ability that knocks a bot out of position and into the jungle, or get them to chase you, they'll quickly realize what you're doing and try to get back into the lane, and if you body block them they'll just sit there trying to force past you while you auto-attack them to death. Ranged bots (the 1v1 Ra AI is especially bad about this) might not even bother attacking you back.
  • The bots have a habit of using their ultimates as soon as they see you as soon as they're off cooldown, in 1v1 where Ra is always the only opponent, this is merely an annoyance and can be helped with a health pot or returning to base, annoying but not significant. In the 3v3, while this can potentially score them a kill, the fact that Ne Zha is the only currently coded melee AI means that the problem with Ne Zha players is even worse, as Ne Zha Bot will very often save enemies from being hit by Poseidon's (much more damaging) ult.
  • And like the issue with players, the issue with Anhur's obelisk blocking allies from getting a kill or landing ults, or helping an enemy get away is much worse than it is in PvP games.
• Artistic License – Religion: Somewhat averted. It's a given that some gods won't fully fit their characterization in the legend they're from (Mostly to keep the game rating as "Teen"), but for the most part they're fairly accurate, though there are a few glaring omissions, Apollo lacking a bow and arrow being one of them^note Apollo's lacking of his bow was lampshaded by Hi-Rez, as they went with the finger guns because it was hilarious to visualize.
• Ascended Meme: Swagni, a joke based on Agni's bizarre pre-rework walk that made him look like he was walking on the moon, eventually made its way into the game as a skin for him.
  • Derpules, pretty much a case of Be Careful What You Wish For. Hercules post-remodel was complained a lot for his less Boisterous Bruiser fun persona and a disproportionate head. Derpules shrunk the head even further and makes the voice even more high pitched.
  • Head over Heels Cupid is similar to Derpules in that players often complain that Cupid's big-headed model and voice are unfitting for the game's overall style. HiRez doubled down on these complaints by making his head even bigger and lowering his voice in this skin.
  • The titular bombs from Vulcan’s Magma Bomb ability earned the affectionate name “meatballs” from the fans, come Chef Vulcan and now those balls of magma are legit meatballs.
  • The community has joked for some time about giving guns to Kuzenbo and Khepri. Kuzenbo now totes revolvers in his Crime Boss skin, while Khepri literally becomes a walking gun in his Big Gun skin.
• As Himself: Voicing themselves as crossover skins are Slipknot members Alessandro Venturella and Michael Pfaff, and Virtual YouTubers Ironmouse, Veibae, Nyanners, Silvervale, Kson On Air and Froot.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Ares' ultimate is terrifying at first glance (it can potentially pull the entire enemy team into one spot and stun them for 2.5 seconds). The problem is there are now 3 active abilities that everyone can purchase that can block the effect, and the increasing number of gods with CC immunity means many gods don't even need them. Don't expect to ever actually land such a pull in a serious game. To make matters worse, contrary to popular belief, you can still attack Ares while he does his ultimate, putting him in a very risky spot.
  • Xing Tian's similar ult barely manages to be averted: it has the same problems as Ares' ult but has the strong bonuses of having a shorter cooldown, Xing's 3 allowing him to get up to enemies quickly and then pop off his ult before they can react, and the fact that it deals damage to enemies on contact even when they are CC immune.
  • Cabrakan's third ability causes an earthquake that deals decent damage in a good AoE, pulls enemies towards him and can be sustained as long as he has mana. While this may sound terrifying, it's worth noting that the ability doesn't provide any form of CC immunity to Cabrakan himself, nor does it disable escape abilities... meaning that pretty much anyone worth trapping is able to either dash/jump/blink away or to stun/silence/dazzle/push/pull Cabrakan and interrupt the ability. It does have a low cooldown, though, so it's not as impractical as it might seem, but still...
  • Vamana's ultimate turns him into a colossus few can take on in a straight up fight. Unfortunately it doesn't make him any faster and actually disables his dash and slow, meaning most people will just run away from you and you can't catch them.
  • Xbalanque's ultimate gives all enemies a Morton's Fork between stopping and getting beaten on, or trying to get away and suffering a long stun. While sounding powerful at first, the fact that it's so telegraphed means that skilled players will know to queue up their escapes to wait until after it's passed, or even time it perfectly so they can stop the second the stun activates and barely be slowed down by it. The fact that Xbalanque himself does enough damage on his own to obliterate most enemies means his Ult is the least powerful part of his skillset.
  • Chang'e's passive sends her rabbit companion to fetch items for her when she buys them. While this sounds useful at first, the rabbit's speed, as well as the nature of the genre being to go back and get items when you're low on health/mana, means that you'll rarely use it outside of the first few minutes of laning and just spend the rest of the match teleporting back. Not to mention that in the Assault game mode, you can't go back to base or buy anything until you die. This means that Chang'e effectively has no passive at all due to the rules of Assault, putting her at somewhat of a disadvantage. This is somewhat rectified now that her passive grants her 25% movement speed with no backpedal penalties whist utilizing her dances.
• Badass Boast: Considering how they are gods, one has to be aware that they know how to talk down to their opponents.
  Chronos: "They might be able to kill you, but I'll make it as if you were never born!"
  Hercules: "I have performed impossible labors before! Defeating me will be your first!"
  Xbalanque: "When the world closes in on you, I will be there! And you will know fear!"
  Ymir: "I am unstoppable force and the immovable mountain."
• Back from the Dead: This is usually the excuse for certain beings being in the game when they are supposed to be dead in their respective religion. Ymir and Bakasura are good examples of this.
  • Happens every time a god respawns.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Dying to minions or towers does not reward the enemy team with gold for your death. Because nobody can return to the fountain to heal or buy items until they die in Assault, expect to do this often in that game mode.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and to a lesser extent Norse pantheons. Using their historical counterparts as a basis:
  • Egyptian: Neith is the mother of Sobek, Serqet, Khepri, Thoth, Apophis (The Slash jungle boss) and Ra, who is the father of Anhur and Bastet. He is also (through his son Shu) the grandfather of Nut and Geb, who are the parents of Eset, Osiris and Set. Osiris in turn is the father of Anubis through his sister Nephthys, who disguised herself as Eset due to her husband-brother/Osiris' brother Set being sterile. That's every playable character in the pantheon, just so you know. Most of the screwed up revolves around Ra.
  • Greek: Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus are brothers who don't like each other very much, Hera is Zeus's wife and their sister. Zeus is the father of Apollo, Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite by various other goddesses and father to Ares by Hera. Thanatos and Nemesis are siblings, and cousins once removed to Zeus (their mother Nyx is the sister of Zeus' grandmother Gaia). This isn't including the zig-zagged relations they have with the Roman gods.
  • Roman: Bellona, Bacchus, Hercules, Mercury and Vulcan are all siblings. Terra is their great-grandmother and Nox is their great-great aunt and mother of Discordia. Cupid is their nephew. With opinion leaning more towards the Romans being the same as the Greeks, we can now add all of them to the mix, with the sibling sets of both Pantheons being siblings to each other (10 kids and counting; Zeus has been busy), Vulcan being married to his sister Aphrodite, Cupid being the son of Aphrodite and Ares, Nox being Thanatos's, Nemesis's and Discordia's mother, Terra being Zeus', Poseidon's and Hades' grandmother, and Nox being their great aunt.
  • Norse: Odin is descended from Ymir on his mother’s side. Thor is his son. Loki is the father of Hel, Jormungandr and Fenrir. Skadi is the mother of Freya. Ullr is Thor's stepson (son of Thor's wife Sif and an unknown father).
  • Chinese: Hou Yi and Chang'e are husband and wife, while Yu Huang is Erlang Shen’s maternal uncle.
  • Mayan: Xbalanque and Hun Batz are half brothers (same father, Hun's the older), and Awilix and Xbalanque are technically the same person (Xbalanque is the incarnation of Awilix).
  • Hindu: Kali is technically Ganesha's mother, as she is one of Parvati's forms (this also makes her Shiva’s wife). Ravana and Kumbhakarna are brothers. Vamana and Rama are technically the same person, Vishnu.
  • Japanese: Amaterasu, Susano, Tsukuyomi and Raijin are siblings with their mother being Izanami (though the first three were born from Izanagi's body, Izanami is still regarded as their mother).
• Bird People: Ra, Thoth and Horus from the Egyptian pantheon are this.
• Bittersweet Ending: The first major arch of Smite's story ends with this. Shiva intervenes to destroy and then recreate the world, foiling Tiamat's plans to remake everything in her image. Gilgamesh and the other gods then forgive Tiamat and invite her to be with them, which Tiamat accepts albeit rather begrudgingly. At this point, most of the gods have now learned their lesson and swear to keep the mistakes of the previous world from repeating in this one by uniting as essentially a divine council to keep the peace. The downside is a lot of good gods had to die to achieve this victory, also Atlas once again takes up his burden of holding up the sky. Both Atlas and Shiva also sadly lament to each other that even with a unified council to watch over them, the gods will simply make new mistakes and even if they don't new evils will always be on the rise. The old god and titan do at least take solace in the fact that this newborn world is at peace... For now.
• Butt-Monkey: Denton gets slapped around a fair bit in his appearance in post-match animations. He's a rather popular character in the Smite community.
• Casting Gag:
  • The voice actor of Wukong is Sean Schemmel, who is best known as Goku, who is heavily based on Wukong himself (and they even have the exact same name in different readings). Wukong still doesn't have a Kamehameha equivalent though. Ditto in the Mexican Spanish dub, since Wukong is voiced by Mario Castañeda, Goku's Mexican voice actor. In Brazilian Portuguese as well: Voice actor Wendel Bezerra dubs both Sun Wukong and Son Goku.
  • The Retro Hercules skin is voiced by Kevin Sorbo, who portrayed Hercules in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
  • Bastet is voiced by Leah Clark. One of her best known roles is Blair, a magical talking cat, from the anime Soul Eater.
  • In the Brazilian dub, Athena had the same voice as her Saint Seiya counterpart.
  • Cliodhna is voiced by Elsie Lovelock, who previously was an indie voice actress dubbing webcomics, but in particular various Pokémon Sword and Shield comics that poke fun at the 'Scottish Female Pokemon Trainer' meme, a lot of times using the rendition by Merryweather Comics. With the Celtic Pantheon getting Scotireland tropes around them, it's quite probable that the voice director of Smite would have known the meme and comic dubs, and then picked up Elsie for the Celtic deity that screams a lot. ("Oh no, she's Scottish...")
  • Cristina Valenzuela voices a skin for Discordia named Bad Apple. She has sung multiple covers of Bad Apple!!.
  • The developers have commented that their decision to cast Harish Bhimani to voice Shiva was at least inspired by his roles in various Indian productions which adapted Hindu mythology, chief among them Mahabharata, which he narrated.
• Combat Stilettos: More than a few goddesses run into battle with these. Everyone expects Aphrodite to sport them, but so does ATHENA with all her heavy armor.
• Combination Attack:
  • Or combining two heroes for massive results. One of the most famous combo duos is Zeus + Odin. Zeus' Lightning Storm affects a large area, but everyone is free to run off from the lightning. Odin's Ring of Spears makes sure everyone stays in place for maximum voltage and the Lightning Storm makes it easier for Odin to pile up his passive, getting more powerful that way. In battlefields where team fights are aplenty, this duo is a terror.
  • Many characters have ultimates that are much more useful as part of a combo rather than just using them alone, the chief examples being Ares (pulls every enemy god in range towards him and stuns them after a delay), Xing Tian (sweeps up gods in a circle around him then tosses them all in the direction he's facing) and Chang'e (stuns all gods in a line, the stun lasts longer for each god hit).
• Competitive Balance: The five classes each have their own specialties and weaknesses
  • Assassins are Fragile Speedster, but can also be Glass Cannon.
  • Guardians are Stone Wall, but have decent strength to be Mighty Glacier.
  • Hunters are Long-Range Fighter and are Glass Cannon.
  • Mages are Squishy Wizard could specialize in White, Black or Red.
  • Warriors are Jack of All Stats as they are rather balanced, but nowhere on the level of the other four classes.
• Cosmetic Award: Playing as a god enough can unlock up to three skins for them - a golden and blue Palette Swap, a golden and black Palette Swap, and a diamond and blue palette swap.
• Crack Defeat:
  • Because your respawn timer gets longer the more you're winning combined with the much higher native respawn timers for higher level gods, it's entirely possible in Joust or Assault (Conquest too but this is rarer) for a dominating team to slip up in one teamfight, get deicided, and then have the beleaguered enemy team push down the Titan before the respawn.
  • Happens egregiously in Arena and Domination too. The handicap respawn timer goes up to 50 seconds in game modes where normal respawn is around 5 seconds and the entire team spawns in one wave. 50 seconds of uncontested play is enough for the losing team to push 3 minion waves through the portal in Arena or capture all 3 points in Domination.
• Crossover: The game has released different sets of costumes that are actually characters from other series.
  • Ares has a Paladins skin of Fernando.
  • Sylvanus has a skin that turns him into Bob Ross, and has Grover becoming a happy little tree.
  • November 2019 introduced the main cast of RWBY: Ruby Rose for Thanatos, Weiss Schnee for Freya, Blake Belladonna for Amaterasu, and Yang Xiao Long for Terra. They use the designs introduced in Volume 7 of the show, while Ruby has a second option of using her classic design from Volumes 1-3. Cinder Fall would be added later as a skin for Morgan Le Fay.
  • July 2020 added Avatar: The Last Airbender, including skins of Aang, Zuko and Korra. They are for Merlin, Susanoo, and Skadi respectively. Aang and Korra have their Avatar State forms as alternates, while Zuko has the Blue Spirit. Azula, Iroh and Momo were later added as skins for Pele, Bacchus and Ratatoskr respectively.
  • November 2020 saw the arrival of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with skins of Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo. These skins, which are incarnations of the Turtles unique to Smite within the TMNT multiverse, are used for Osiris, Sun Wukong, Loki, and Mercury respectively, and they come with Prestige Track versions that reference the 1987 cartoon. Later on, Splinter, Shredder, Krang, and Slash were added as skins for Hachiman, Ravana, Xing Tian, and Kuzenbo respectively.
  • July 2021 saw a collaboration with Stranger Things, featuring Eleven for Scylla, Hopper for Hopper, the Demogorgon for Bakasura, and the Mind Flayer for Sylvanus.
  • November 2021 had a crossover with Transformers, featuring Optimus Prime for Geb, Megatron for Ra, and Starscream for Jing Wei.
  • March 2022 brought forth Rambo for Ullr.
  • June 2022 brought in the band members of Slipknot as skins for Poseiden, Chaac, and Raijin.
  • July 2022 added characters from Nickelodeon outside of Avatar and TMNT to the mix. Danzaburou gets Rocko, Janus gets Danny Phantom, Cupid gets Invader Zim, Freya gets Jenny (the skin referring to her as XJ9), and Gilgamesh gets Powdered Toast Man.
  • November 2022 saw a crossover event with Runescape, giving retro-styled skins of the King Black Dragon for Cerberus, a rune armor for Bellona, the Wise Old Man for Merlin, a Gnome Child for Vamana and a blessed dragonhide armor for Neith.
  • January 2023 introduced Magic: The Gathering, featuring Jace for Yu Huang, Chandra for Pele, Liliana for Nu Wa, Atraxa for Thanatos and Karn for Atlas.
  • April 2023 added G.I. Joe, with 2 skins each for Hou Yi, Neith, and Susano; one from the Joes and one from Cobra. Hou Yi has Duke and Cobra Commander, Neith has Scarlett and the Baroness, and Susano has Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.
  • May 2023 saw the arrival of some of VSHojo's Virtual YouTubers (half of whom, as YouTube description of the announcement trailer for the skins would admit, had just become ex-members of the company in the prior month): Ironmouse for Persephone, Silvervale for Skadi, Kson On Air for Nemesis, Veibae for Nu Wa, Nyanners for Serqet, and Froot for Izanami. The December 2023 rerun adds Zentreya as Mulan.
• Crossover Cosmology: Pretty much the entire point of the game. There are gods and other characters from a variety of different mythologies and they come together and duke it out against each other.
• Crutch Character: Assassins tend to either be this or the polar opposite. The Magikarps are generally considered far more viable than the crutches.
  • Averted and Inverted and Whatnot as the game changes. Some crutch characters like Thanatos or Arachne can win entire games solely out of the fact that they can completely destroy the enemy team by themselves before the five minute mark, and the enemy team can't recover in time.
• Cute, but Cacophonic:
  • Normally, Chang'e is the Cute Mute and her grunts and giggles are adorable. She can finally speak using the Lunar Tango skin, but has a grating Mexican accent and you start wishing she'd shut up again.
  • Kawaii Pop Bastet is a nice-looking skin matched with a very eager and high-pitched voice that can prove downright grating. Some players use this skin for that exact reason. The various other Japanese Pop skins that have been released continue this.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul:
  • A running trend they seem to be going for is to give the more unambiguously evil Gods and Demons skins that make them mechanical monsters.
  • Averted with skins like G.E.B. 1. Geb is rather benevolent, but still received a rockin' robot skin as a reference to Transformers.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • SMITE's original icon was a gold lightning bolt on a royal blue background. Now, it's still got the bolt, but it's a duller, darker gold, and the background color behind it is just charcoal grey. The bolt is also a bit more narrow and edgier.
  • Same thing goes for the main map itself. during the early stages of the beta, it was very sunny, bright and quite pleasant. Now it's rather bleak and destroyed in comparison. However, for Season 2, Hi-Rez launched a brighter map... though it still keeps some of its bleak elements in it.
  • Taken to the next level for the Season 5 remake of the conquest map, in which the Chaos side gets covered in some kind of purple looking corruption as part of the storyline from the Season 4 Odyssey event in which Ragnarok is unleashed by Hades in the end.
  • During the Stranger Things event, the Arena map has been visibly overtaken by the Upside-Down.
• Dark Is Not Evil: All over the place due to the different cultural values of the civilizations the gods were pulled from, it's easier to list which gods are as evil as they look. Check out the character page for specific examples.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: For the god you're playing as, that is - one of the Revenue-Enhancing Devices is buying a voice pack for a god that has them speaking for the game's voice commands system instead of the usual announcer.
• Deity of Human Origin: Guan Yu is perhaps the most notable example, being a real Chinese general from the 2nd century AD who was eventually deified as a god of war, loyalty and justice. SMITE’s in-game lore also gives this status to the folklore heroine Mulan and the legendary King Arthur.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Characters you can punch out include various primordial deities, a world ending sea serpent, a king of demons, death himself, two different avatars of the earth, and a sun-eating snake, though that one requires multiple gods to take out.
  • And of course Cthulhu is in the game. Which means, he's punchable by anyone in the roster. Heck, the majority of the tropes in the Index about Cthulhu can apply in this game as well: You can taunt Cthulhu (but he can easily fight back against it), you can get utterly drained just to punch him, or as Cthulhu player, you can be genuinely impressed at other players. Lore-wise, the one who canonically punched out Cthulhu was Tiamat.
• Divine Conflict: The game is a Crossover Cosmology game all about this. It involves gods from various pantheons, such as Zeus, Loki, Sobek, Sun Wukong, and others, fighting one another.
• Dragons Up the Yin Yang: Yu Huang, the Top God of the Chinese pantheon, pretty much embodies this trope (being a master of Daoist cultivation and a dragon summoner). Hou Yi and Chang'e also represent the Yin/Yang dualism with their Male Sun, Female Moon dynamic, and there’s a literal Chinese dragon, Ao Kuang, to complete the circle as well.
• Dynamic Entry:
  • Leaps and teleports that go clear through jungle walls are a staple of the genre. However in this game, because of the third person camera, it is much MUCH more surprising when someone very clearly jumps straight THROUGH a wall (that you can't see behind) and starts beating your face in.
  • Apollo and Athena have global ultimates (Athena's only goes to teammates) that can let them drop in on a fight anywhere on the map within seconds. Thor's is less omnipresent but also comes down much faster. Thanatos' is even more mobile than Thor's but has a rather different purpose.
• Easter Egg: The Slushii skin for Hades has a floating display over his console in-game. While impossible to actually read in a match, this display actually contains legible text◊ which of course has a bunch of jokes in it, such a song titled "Money in the banana stand".
• The End of the World as We Know It: The gods' descriptions stress how little time we have left. It finally happens at the end of the Dharmic Era event, fortunately Shiva fixes things.
• Everybody Hates Hades: Hades and Anubis both seem to be on the evil side of "enslaving humans", despite the mythological Hades being morally neutral and Anubis being unambiguously good and caring for humans. There's also a notable reconstruction: Ah Puch, the underworld ruler of the Mayan Pantheon, who's also downright evil to boot even in the original myth. Izanami is also another reconstruction as she's not exactly a beloved Goddess of Death because of her angry oath to kill 1000 men every day. Unlike Ah Puch, however, she has a tragic origin.
• Excuse Plot: Actually, despite god lore often talking about their reasons for joining the battle, it's debatable whether it even reaches the level of Excuse Plot. The story seems to basically boil down to "Gods. Fight. Go."
  • However, a video released by Hi Rez suggests that the humans have stopped worshipping the gods, and the gods have gone to war over whether to destroy/subjugate the humans, or to protect them. Of course you have people like Loki, Thanatos, and Fenrir who are just there to kill the gods or cause chaos.
  • Eventually Smite released a free comic book series which featured this story as a backstory. While the game kinda follows the trope, the comic most definitely did not.
• Expy:
  • A lot of the gods have kits inspired by existing characters in other MOBAs, most commonly League of Legends (Freya is obviously inspired by pre-rework Kayle, while Loki is Shaco with Warwick's ultimate instead). Some have clearly been pieced together from several other characters; Isis, for example, has modified versions of Anivia's Flash Frost, Rumble's Flamespitter and Maokai's Vengeful Maelstrom.
  • Chang'e has similarities to Sona; They're both pretty Asian women in blue dresses with a musical theme (a music note plays every time Chang'e auto-attacks). Chang'e seems to be voluntarily mute (she giggles occasionally to show she CAN talk, but usually lets her pet rabbit talk for her) for no apparent reason other than to press the resemblance to actually mute Sona. Thematically, Sona's abilities are a poke, a heal, and move speed for evasion. Chang'e's abilities are a poke, a heal, and a dodge, all of which give her move speed. Their ultimates are nearly identical. Unlike most pairings they both look and play nearly the same. Chang'e did not retain Sona's aura style buff though, that instead goes to Amaterasu.
  • Hercules is pretty much melee Huskar. This also makes him a Captain Ersatz of Huskar's other Captain Ersatz Tryndamere. He combines the two's traits by adding Tryndamere's melee nature and heavy hits onto Huskar's powerful heal which gets better the more injured he is.
  • And also averted by Zeus, who also made an appearance in Defense of the Ancients: All-Stars, but plays NOTHING alike to his DOTA counterpart. In fact, his DOTA ult now belonged to Nu Wa.
  • Athena (magic tank) and Tyr (heavily ability based bruiser) look a lot like and have a couple of the same skills as Pantheon (physical assassin) and Tryndamere (heavily autoattack reliant carry) but also play very differently from their league counterparts.
  • This is even more noticeable in the item shop. Most items have clearly recognizable League of Legends counterparts. For example: Deathbringer and Rod of Tahuti are clearly Infinity Edge and Rabadon's Deathcap respectively, Executioner is pre-rework (ie current back when it released) Black Cleaver, Midgardian Mail is Randuin's Omen without the active, Polynomicon is Lich Bane, Hide of the Nemean Lion is Thornmail, Bloodforge is Bloodthirster, etc. Most new items are physical/magical equivalents of magical/physical items that do exist in League of Legends (and by extension Smite itself). A couple items have been reworked to not have active components, for example Soul Reaver is basically a Deathfire Grasp that automatically uses itself on ability cast once a minute instead of having you activate it once a minute.
  • Fenrir plays much like Lifestealer, being a carry who deals the most damage with basic attacks and uses his ridiculous lifesteal to jungle early. And by proxy, he also can be compared often to Warwick.
  • Two Wukongs/incarnations of the Monkey King in a MOBA along with another one in Heroes of Newerth. All three of them are tricky characters with a lot of possibly-scaling damage and tricks brought to the table, along with their signature flying cloud and even a staff slamming-based attack. Other than that though, their other abilities are often very different from each other. Both Smite and League of Legends' incarnations of Sun Wukong are also focused on occasionally being a bit tanky with similar passives and even use of decoys. And then Wukong himself is set to appear in Dota 2, a former Optional Boss Promoted to Playable, but he's a bit squishier than the other types of Wukong.
  • Ah Puch is notable for just how similar he is to Heroes of Newerth's Gravekeeper. Not only do both follow the same "zombie" theme, but both have kits that share a lot in common. They both even have an ability that has not only the same effect but the same name (Corpse Explosion).
  • When an old God receives a rework, chances are their old abilities will be reused for new gods. For instance, old Guan Yu's ultimate, Tactical Advantage, was reworked into Amaterasu's Dazzling Offensive. Arachne's old ultimate became Sylvanus' basic grab-pull skill. As of 2017, classic Nu Wa's Pillars of Heaven was reworked into Ganesha's Dharmic Pillars.
  • Design/Archetype wise, Ullr and Skadi are the split of the 'hoodie ice archer female' that was started by both Drow Ranger and Ashe. Both are hunters/ADC, but Skadi only has the ice and female gender, she uses a throwing spear, while Ullr has the hood and bow.
• Eye of Horus Means Egypt: It's literally part of the Egyptian Pantheon icon and present on many of the Egyptian gods' attack icons.
  • Ra's staff has the "Eye" on its tip, possibly due to being mistaken for the "Eye Of Ra". His eyes are also surrounded by markings that make them resemble the “Eye of Horus”.
  • Isis has it present in her design.
  • Thoth's Hieroglyphic Assault attack.
  • Naturally Horus himself has them, though they are done more subtly with distinct natural patterns around his eyes.
• Fanservice: Most goddesses and even a fair amount of gods have appropriately divine endowments and aren't afraid to flaunt them. Actually perfectly Justified as quite a few of them actually did dress like that in their respective mythologies.
  • A small part of the Hindu fanbase was enraged that Kali was so scantily clad, despite the fact that she only has Godiva Hair in most depictions of her. However, many Hindu players liked the pre-rework design.
  • This gets to egregious levels when you see Athena, goddess of battle and strategy, fight in high heels. Many consider this game's spam of fanservice to be a major annoyance. It's all part of Athena's battle strategy
  • Even more so with Neith, an Egyptian goddess of war and wisdom (among other things), who is one of the most stripperific goddesses in the game.
  • Quite possibly the biggest male example is "Hunkules", a skin for Hercules that strips him down to a speedo, exposing nearly his entire ripped body.
• Foil:
  • Consider the fact that both Geb and Ymir serve the same role. Geb is the Earth, Ymir is Midgard. But there are significant differences. Geb is alive, nurturing mankind, while Ymir is simply an inactive corpse meant to serve as ground for mortals to live on. Geb is portrayed as calm, wise, sorrowful and even reluctant to battle. Ymir is portrayed as violent, stupid, vicious and revels in the chance to end his foes. Now consider their abilities. Geb's 1st ability is rolling and tackling opponents (movement) while Ymir's is conjuring a wall (stalling/trapping). Their 2s are somewhat the same, causing damage in a wave form. Their 3s vary greatly, Geb's protects allies while Ymir freezes and traps enemies. Their ults are very similar as well, causing AOE damage around them. These similarities and opposing tropes has people convinced Hi-Rez decided to have two gods fulfilling the same role act as total juxtapositions to each other.
  • Nemesis and Tyr. Though both are often associated with bringing evil-doers to justice, one is a Stripperiffic and vengeful goddess who focuses more on attack while Tyr is a big, bulky god who is more of an upholder of justice that specialises more in defence.
  • Tiamat and Gilgamesh. Both are rulers from Babylon, but are specifically designed to be opposites. Tiamat is an ancient and wicked dragon who specializes in using several skills and summoning her children to fight on her behalf, making herself a one-god army that tries to avoid direct conflict until it is most optimal. Gilgamesh meanwhile is a mortal man who was once cruel but matured into a compassionate hero, he has a much simpler selection of skills and excels at close-quarter combat. Though while he is good at taking on the enemy one-on-one, Gilgamesh is at his strongest when fighting alongside his allies.
  • Ah Puch and Ix Chel, two of the most powerful figures in Mayan mythology as well as mages. Ah Puch is a foul and hideous skeletal man who focuses purely on harming the enemy and debilitating their healing with darkness and necromancy. Ix Chel on the other hand is a compassionate and beautiful full-figured woman who attacks enemies whilst also healing and supporting allies with her life giving light focused abilities.
• Feathered Serpent: Kukulkan, naturally.
• The Four Gods: With the new Joust map, these four can be seen in the background, Suzaku representing both Phoenixes, Seiryuu being the one who fires from your tower, Byakko being the Attack Buff neutral camp monster, Genbu being the Mana Buff neutral camp monster.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Several Directed Taunt lines are directed to a God that wasn't even included or announced yet, whether it would have the God included or not remain to be seen. Geb has a special taunt to Nut, while Isis has a special taunt to Set, who wouldn't be introduced until later on. Nut isn't a part of the roster... yet.
  • After the Awilix patch, the Curse Voice Apollo skin has taunts to other characters not yet included at the time, first for Hou Yi (Chang'e's husband) and for Medusa. Sure enough, Hou Yi comes next after Awilix. Then they added Bellona, and then... Medusa.
  • Smite has a tendency to include an item named after a mythological figure and then eventually make them playable. So far, the deities that have become playable this way are Chronos (Chronos' Pendant), Thoth (Book of Thoth), Achilles (Achilles' Spear, currently removed), and Yu Huang (Jade Emperor’s Crown).
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From a meta perspective, this game turns Hi-Rez, formerly having zero experience in MOBA and their greatest claim so far was Tribes Ascend (a shooter game), into one amongst the MOBA genres. They didn't have any of the old Defense of the Ancients: All-Stars old crews nor any former Blizzard employee to work on their game, and yet Smite made them stand as one of the best competitors in the market alongside Riot Games, Valve and Blizzard. Smite's success also becomes one of the factors how Paladins becomes one of the greatest competitions against Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch in Hero Shooter genre.
• Fun with Acronyms: Averted, despite usually writing the name with all caps, SMITE doesn't stand for anything.
  • Also Loki, who unlike his live-action movie counterpart, is actually pretty scrawny and wrinkle-faced in this game. Even in his redesign, he's not that bulky.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Season 8 has brought a brand-new “living” version of the conquest map that changes and evolves according to events in the game’s lore. Created story-wise by Tiamat after she saved the world from Cthulhu, it begins as a sunny landscape in which Mount Olympus (Order side) stands opposite Tiamat’s new temple (Chaos side). But as the gods provoke Tiamat’s ire, its atmosphere darkens and new hazards are added to the map’s jungle for players to deal with.
  • Gilgamesh’s arrival has caused Tiamat to make vine walls grow around certain jungle camps, obstructing players’ paths unless they are destroyed with two basic attacks. The skybox of the map has also darkened considerably with added flashes of lightning, reflecting Tiamat’s anger.
  • As of the patch after Morgan le Fay’s arrival, Tiamat has summoned a gigantic tidal wave to cleanse the landscape. The sky is no longer stormy and the vines are gone, but shipwrecks and sea monsters now dot the map. New areas have been added to the jungle and the Draugr has emerged as a new team objective, granting gold, XP and a defense tower buff to the team that slays it.
  • When Cliodhna arrives, the map has become covered in snow and fog—a bleak landscape that reflects the toll inflicted by the war between Gilgamesh and Tiamat. New lantern constructs have been placed at certain spots, which players can destroy with a basic attack to create an area of stealth coverage for themselves.
  • Season 9 continues the trend of map updates that reflect the storyline. The coming of Shiva ushers in a new era of peace, with one of his temples being placed next to Olympus. Tiamat has abandoned her side of the map, leaving her Hanging Gardens to slowly fall into ruin. New Obelisk structures have also spawned on each half of the map, and the team that manages to collect 7 Offerings for their Obelisk first will be granted a powerful new buff called Indra’s Scepter.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Ares' kit seems to be inspired more by Kratos than by any traditional image of the Greek god of war: his main abilities revolve around throwing chains at enemies and spewing fire at them from his demonic-looking shield (though the chains were at least apparently also inspired by a statue of Ares found in Sparta). Guan Yu was actually changed into a physical bruiser because, with the exception of Anhur, at the time all three of the game's other gods of war were magical tanks. Sun Wukong also received a rework because "What we did to Sun Wukong was like if we had made Batman a bat with a man face!", and Medusa who would want to get back at Athena for her curse synergises best with her because Athena can force the enemy to face a certain direction for her petrifying gaze.
  • Actually averted with Neith as long as Viewers Are Geniuses. Neith was goddess of a LOT of things, among them: hunting, archery, war, protecting the bodies of dead soldiers, and even water in addition to creation and weaving.
  • Smite’s story tries to make a lot of characters who are originally evil more sympathetic or outright making them antiheroes like Jormangandr, Charybdis, and Tiamat. Their in-game quotes do not reflect this new lore at all and instead indicate they are just as wicked as they are in their original mythologies.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The Celtic pantheon currently has four playable gods, two males (Cu Chulainn and Cernunnos) and two females (Artio and the Morrigan), and is unique in this respect. Only time will tell if it stays this way.
  • Averted as of Season 8, with the addition of Cliodhna as the third female character.
• The Ghost: there are several deities that do not appear in-game but still get prominent mentions in the roster's lore profiles and even some unused voicelines, including Nut, Hunahpu, and Izanagi. Hou Yi, Ravana, Yu Huang, and Hera used to be this, until their official inclusions.
• Gladiator Games: Arena, and with a Roman Colosseum to boot.
• Glass Cannon: Most of the assassins and mages. With special mention going to:
  • He Bo. His first ability is an extremely powerful nuke that also happens to have the lowest cooldown in the game, his 3 is another powerful nuke, his ultimate is among the hardest hitting abilities in the game, and he backs it all up with a passive that can increase his magical power by up to 30%. This is all kept in check since he is one of the squishiest gods in the game and must constantly weave in and out of dangerously close range to use his abilities.
  • Freya. When fully built she can melt entire teams from range within 10 seconds. She melts just as fast and her only escape is her ultimate ability.
  • Merlin. He can similarly devastate a whole team and does so without even needing an ultimate, but can quickly die after being breathed on wrong.
• God of the Moon: Moon gods from many world mythologies are playable, such as the Japanese Tsukuyomi, the Mayan Awilix and the Chinese Chang’e.
• Good is Not Nice: This being based on mythology, a lot of the "good" gods are dicks anyway.
  • In most of the lore, a lot of the gods' darker histories are glossed over. They completely ignore any mention of rape, incest or pedophilia, especially in Greek mythology. To be fair, they have an ESBR rating to adhere to.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil:
  • With the little lore given in the promotional video, it seems that the gods are divided between gods that want to protect humanity (The Good), gods that want to subjugate humanity (The Bad), and gods that are like "Fuck this conflict, I just wanna kill other gods!" (The Evil).
  • According to the Smite official comic, The Good so far consist of Athena, Neith, Thor, and Nu Wa, the Bad so far consist of Hades, Anubis, Odin, and Sun Wukong.
• Gratuitous Japanese:
  • Deliberately invoked with several of the Japanese-themed skins, to the point of being borderline Played for Laughs.
  • The Japanese Pantheon, however, plays it completely straight, with almost every god so far utilizing some amount of Japanese in their voicelines.
• Heroic Build: Rare is the God whose form is not the envy of their gender-alike mortal players. But well, they are gods and all...
  • Most obviously averted by Bacchus, Vamana (both his chubby old look as his skinny new look) and Zhong Kui.
• I Call It "Vera": Naturally, a lot of gods bring their famed weapons with them. Examples include Thor's Mjolnir, Odin's Gungnir, Guan Yu's Green Dragon Crescent Blade, Freya's Brisingamen, Amaterasu's Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, Cu Chulainn's Gae Bulg, and King Arthur's Excalibur.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In a game where even the autoattacks are skillshots, Neith's ultimate locks onto the target no matter where they are and is guaranteed to hit them. Someone on your team needs to have vision of them, but that in no way means Neith herself needs a direct line of sight. This global arrow will fly through every wall and tower on the map to hit its target. This is the one attack in the entire game that cannot be missed, whether through user error or counterplay... though an enemy god can intercept it. Characters high in the air after using a leaping ability (Bastet, Fenrir, etc.) are considered untargetable until landing in their destination. Even Neith's arrow won't follow you into the air. Instead, it hovers in the air beneath you and waits for you to come back down.
• Instant-Win Condition: If either your or the enemy team's Titan falls, the game is over, however, the Titan is invulnerable as long as all three Phoenixes are still alive.
• Interface Screw:
  • Bacchus, being the God of Wine, utilizes this as his Ultimate, intoxicating all gods within a certain radius around him. This causes the screen to go purplish and the effected gods to stagger about drunkenly for a short time.
  • Xbalanque's Darkest of Nights ultimate - All the enemy players' screens are blacked out except a small radius around their own character.
  • Ra's Divine Light ability - Acts like a slow firing flash-bang both deafening the enemy player's sound and whiting out the player's screen for those facing Ra when the ability finishes firing.
  • Set's Sandstorm ability - The enemy players' screens are partially obscured in a sandstorm effect while in range of the ability.
  • Chernobog's Living Nightmare ultimate - The player targeted by the ability has a limited view while Chernobog travels towards them.
  • Thanatos' Hovering Death ultimate - During the ultimate, your screen is grey-scale with the exception of the death marks on enemy players that can be executed
  • Cthulhu's Insanity debuff - When afflicted with insanity various eerie eyes and phantom tentacles appear around your character, in this case they don't really get in the way but are instead a warning that Cthulhu is now stronger as he gains magical power for every enemy nearby that has insanity.
  • Cliodhna’s Banshee’s Wail ability — unlike other examples, it temporarily makes enemy players unable to hear anything.
• Item Crafting: Averted, every item has 3 tiers. You buy whatever item you want and upgrade it through the tiers instead of crafting smaller items into a bigger one.
• Jiggle Physics: It's there, especially noticeable on characters like Neith, Da Ji, and Aphrodite.
• The Juggernaut: To combat the rampant crowd control coming out with each new god, a lot of the gods have an ability that grants them CC immunity for a duration. More traditional examples include:
  • Tyr who has a passive that makes it so that no CC can last for more than a second on him and who generally builds to both do tons of damage and be extremely hard to kill. A later patch ramped up his self healing ability to ludicrous levels.
  • Guan Yu's new ultimate makes him CC immune for 4 seconds during which he also gets increased speed and does huge damage around him which finally chains into an area stun at the end of the 4 seconds. Combined with his usual tanky build this makes it incredibly hard to stop him from reaching the fragile people behind the tank line.
  • Vamana's ultimate makes him 20 feet tall (he's usually about 3 feet tall), grants him CC immunity, regenerates a percentage of his max health per second, gives him a bit of protections, and gives him a massive damage steroid that also makes his autoattacks splash.
• King Mook: The Fire Giant and Gold Fury, Smite's counterparts to League of Legends Baron Nashor and Dragon respectively. Note that like most things in Smite they are approximately 2-3 times more powerful than the League of Legends equivalents, the Fire Giant especially in contrast to Baron Nashor can put up a mean fight even when a team has reached maxed levels.
• Lighter and Softer: Unlike most MOBAs that take themselves rather seriously, Smite has shown to possess a rather lighthearted and playful tone compared to many other games in the same genre. Most of the Gods' questionable actions in the original myths are also toned down for a general audience. It has gotten darker, particularly with the Conquest map and the game eventually trying to weave a more serious story, but it can still come across as lighter compared to other MOBAs.
• Lightning Bruiser: Appropriately, a lot of the bruisers:
  • Fenrir, Nemesis, Ravana, and Thor all have been relabeled as assassins and no longer fit this trope. Due to the reclassification, they have received small tweaks to their base stats that make them far squishier.
  • Tyr has incredible amounts of base damage and scaling, 2 dashes and a leap, three forms of hard crowd control, either a hefty offensive steroid or a hefty defensive one, and still gets to build tanky.
  • The reworked Guan Yu does tons of damage, can shred protections so his team does more damage, has a ton of defense and a heal built into his kit, and has a dash that slows. The real kicker is his ultimate which has him mount a horse and go on the rampage. While mounted he moves extremely quickly, slows on hit, does TONS of damage (note: executed properly this is the second most damaging physical ability in the entire game and does almost as much base damage as Sun Wukong and Chaac's entire kits), and can't be CC-ed.
  • Amaterasu can blitz around the battlefield and silencing those caught in the blitz, decrease damage taken before launching them back in a ball, and passively increase her and her allies' speed or attack depending on her mood. And everytime she hits the enemy thrice, they and their surrounding allies get their protections shred. And her Ultimate, aside of making her unable to be CC'd, does tons of damage in an area if all hits register to lots of enemies.
• Light Is Good: In contrast to Dark Is Not Evil, whenever there is a light-based deity, it's mostly played for goodness. Khepri and Amaterasu are light-based and wholly good, protective deities. Even Ra, who comes off as a Jerkass, only did so after being dealt severely painful trauma courtesy of Eset (though she sees it as a Necessary Evil to defeat Set), but otherwise, he's also capable of healing/support and is still keeping the world at bay from the wrath of Apep/Apophis (with a little help from Anhur and Bastet). The most shining example is Olorun, whose moves revolve around light and is probably the most selfless and kind character in the whole game.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Zig-zagged. Smite follows genre conventions in that physical autoattackers generally outscale burst mages late game. However, two of the hardest carries in the game (Freya and Chronos) are MAGICAL autoattackers, and the mages retain tons of area effect damage. A late game focused mage like Zeus can easily do more damage in a team fight than the physical carry. This is a large problem in game balance, as since everyone in this game could potentially die in a few seconds (yes, even the tanks), Power Creep has forced everyone to deal insane damage, have at least one form of CC immunity, and some sort of ability damage, along with a large dose of self sufficiency. In other words, everyone has to be a Quadratic Wizard AND a Linear Warrior.
• Lunacy: The game includes a couple of playable moon gods such as Chang’e, Tsukuyomi and Awilix. Downplayed in the case of Yemoja (as she only has one moon-themed ability) and Averted in the case of Thoth, who wholly focuses on arcane magic.
• Magic Knight: This comes in three flavors. The first are Guardians, in rare cases they are boosting their damage (otherwise they are more Mighty Glacier or Stone Wall). The second are Mages that do not follow the typical AOE caster and instead make use of their normal attacks, necessitating the purchase of items that promote magical lifesteal, empowering their normal attacks or importantly, attack speed, enabling them to become carries, including Freya, Ao Kuang (after his rework), Chronos, Zeus, Sol, and Olorun. The third case is Amaterasu, a Warrior that buys physical items, but her attacks look like she's imbuing magic in her skills.
• Magikarp Power:
  • As in every MOBA, carries get substantially stronger with items. Freya and Chronos are even more this than the physical carries. They start out weak but by endgame become absolute monsters.
  • Zeus USED to be this until a retool brought his early game wave clear up to scratch.
  • Finally Kukulkan has fairly low base damage but has a passive that grants him magical power equal to 5% of his maximum mana. A fairly common build for him includes a couple items that rely on killing minions to build stacks. These items are not only time consuming to stack, they are also very expensive. However, by the time he finishes stacking them he will have a combination of tons of health, mana, and magical power that isn't usually feasible or even possible to attain.
• Mayan Doomsday: The creators sure had their share of fun with this and their Mayan gods. Hun Batz keeps babbling about the end of the world and on the very date of the apocalypse, they released Xbalanque, who has jokes poking fun of the doomsday.
• Medium Awareness: Every god has comments for buying items instead of it just being Gameplay and Story Segregation. Some, such as the likes of Thanatos or Hel's Dark form, may even express their dislike of being made to buy defensive items. Characters who are tanks like Khepri and Guan Yu on the other hand will usually be happy to get items that increase their durability.
• Mirror Match: A lot of the MOTDs simply constrain the god pool you can pick from. A popular one is called Thor's Day where two teams of 5 Thors are thrown into an Arena match.
• Mystical Jade: Prominently evoked for the Chinese pantheon, given the importance of jade in Chinese culture. Their Top God, Yu Huang, is literally known as the Jade Emperor. The "Jade Corruption" event put a dark turn on this trope, bringing a new Joust map in which corrupted jade shards have infected the Chaos side and produced animated terracotta soldiers to attack the Order side.
• Mythology Gag:
  • A lot of the Guest Fighter skins' lines, taunts, and jokes are taken directly from their original sources.
  • During the Stranger Things crossover event, the Arena map was redesigned to have been overtaken by the Upside-Down, with the dimension's trademark vines and spores scattered throughout. Additionally, Joyce Byers's alphabetical Christmas light setup can be seen hanging on a few of the walls.
• Never Found the Body: An interesting variation regarding Chaac, Zeus, Anhur, Mercury and Ao Kuang, who were seemingly killed in the lore, but revealed to be Not Quite Dead in the events of Odyssey: Underworld. Their bodies were definitely found on the battlefield. The respective lands of death, on the other hand...
• Non-Indicative Name: The playable units are called "Gods" even if technically speaking not every character counts as a god by the definitions of their original mythology, including some monsters^note Cerberus, Medusa, Arachne, Charybdis, Scylla, Jormangodr, Fenrir, Ratatoskr, Kuzenbo, etc., legendary figures who never officially ascended to actual godhood^note Achilles, Mulan, Jing Wei, Sun Wukong, Gilgamesh, the Arthurian characters, etc., and other enemies of the gods^note Atlas (a Titan), Bakasura (a demon), Ymir (a Giant), etc..
• No Sense of Humor: Some gods just plain refuse to joke. Examples include Tyr, Guan Yu (who thinks at War Is Hell and refuses to make fun of it) and Rama (who thinks getting his girlfriend kidnapped by an anti-God demon and him trying to save her at all costs isn't funny stuff)
• One-Word Title
• Optional Boss: Like most MOBA, there are multiple optional bosses depending of the version. The Conquest Map has the Gold Fury (as the lesser, gold-producing one) and Fire Giant (as the one to give a party-wide buff). The Siege Map has the Siege Beast (which can be summoned to strike a lane). The Clash map has the Destroyer Deity of the Egyptian Mythology, Apophis. This game is unique in the optional boss treatment for one thing: As 2023 reveals, an optional boss can be Promoted to Playable, as the Fire Giant is revealed to be the Destroyer Deity of the Norse Mythology, Surtr, all along.
• Orange/Blue Contrast:
  • The two opposing forces are Order (blue) and Chaos (orange).
  • All the golden skins are this, being solid gold with blue trim.
  • In several god card arts, including Apollo, Ares, Agni, Bastet, and Poseidon.
• Order Versus Chaos:
  • The two titans (final objectives) are the Titan of Order and the Titan of Chaos.
  • The official comic expands on this. Two sides, one who believe that humans should continue to worship the gods (order) vs those who believe that mortals should do as they please (chaos). This also creates a Gameplay and Story Segregation because the Order side wants human subjugation, presented with bright sides and the Chaos side wants to protect humans... represented with destructive side (and one of such member is... Athena)
• Our Banshees Are Louder: Cliodhna, who is actually the Queen of the Banshees, is suitably terrifying and ghostly. She can walk through walls and scream so loudly that her targets temporarily lose their audio.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Chiron, the wisest and most civilized centaur in Greek mythology, makes his appearance in SMITE as a Hunter. In his Ultimate he can briefly take on the form of the constellation he was turned into (Sagittarius). Horned centaurs also appear as the bearers of the Speed buff on the Conquest map.
• Our Demons Are Different: Ravana, his brother Kumbhakarna and Bakasura are rakshasas from Hindu mythology. For the more traditional western demon, Chernobog is the closest thing SMITE has to the actual Devil from Christian lore.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The game does a good job showing off different dragons from world mythologies.
  • The Chinese Ao Kuang carries his sense of regalness, is associated with water, doesn't have wings, and makes lots of treasures, though he's not very benign if his history with Ne Zha is to be taken to account.
  • The Western Fafnir is bipedal, winged, more evil and greedy, breathes poison, and hoards gold. Also unlike the other dragons he wasn’t born a dragon, but became one via a curse.
  • The South American Kukulkan is a great plumed serpent, has four feathered wings, controls the wind, and is purely associated with nature rather than treasure. He is aloof and proud like most dragons, but is firmly benevolent in contrast to Fafnir and Tiamat who are both wicked and Ao Kuang who isn't evil but is very capricious.
  • The Mesopotamian Tiamat is the perfect example of a Draconic Abomination, whilst she takes the form of a classic winged quadrupedal dragon it is noticeably more eldritch in design. She is associated with the primordial ocean, can manipulate reality itself, is a Mother of a Thousand Young, and is the most wicked dragon in the game being an egocentric megalomaniac who wants to reshape the world in her image.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Fafnir, at least when he isn’t in his cursed dragon form. He more closely follows the mold of dwarves from Norse mythology, who were known for their greed.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Ymir and Skadi are both jotuns or “frost giants” from Norse mythology. While Ymir looks like a walking glacier, Skadi is much more human-like and isn’t that much taller than her fellow Norse gods.
• Our Titans Are Different: The Order and Chaos Titans serve as end-game objectives in most game modes. In earlier seasons they were not modeled on real Titans from Greek mythology, but starting with Season 5 the Order Titan became Themis (Titan of divine justice) and the Chaos Titan Cronus (father of the original six Olympians). Finally, Season 8 sees the addition of Atlas as the first playable Titan god.
• Our Witches Are Different: Baba Yaga from Slavic Mythology, complete with her iconic mortar, pestle and chicken-legged house. Her kit is based around a sort of “controlled unpredictability,” with her random generation of potions and the varying pathways of her first ability.
• Palette Swap: Every god includes an alternate skin that changes their colours and nothing else. Some have other skins created for them that change more, but a single Palette Swap skin is guaranteed for every god.
• The Phoenix: They guard the Titans on each side of the map in most game modes. In Conquest, there are three per side and taking down all of them is the only way to make their Titan killable. They will attack enemy players and minions, and will respawn after a set time upon being killed.
• Physical God: Almost all of the playable characters are this. Some, however, are demigods (Hercules, Cu Chulainn), while some are demons (Bakasura, Ravana), powerful monsters (Arachne, Fenrir), and really accomplished regular humans (King Arthur, Mulan).
• Play Every Day: Like you wouldn't believe, though it has gotten better overtime.
  • Each separate game mode has its own 100 favor bonus every day. This adds up to 700 favor per day, whereas you generally get about 100 per hour otherwise.
  • In addition, rewards have been added for consecutive daily log ins. The first 5 days give favor while the last two give gems, which can normally only be obtained with real money. It should be noted that you don't need to actually play any games to get these rewards, you just have to get past the log in screen. You also don't have to worry about missing future rewards if you miss a day, it will keep your current reward progress.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Denton The Cyclops, a character who turns up in a couple of victory animations and defeat animations and provided an advertisement for voice packs by wearing wigs or using props for relevant gods while apparently voicing some examples of voice packs. He's garnered the title of Ensemble Dark Horse for this.
• Poor Communication Kills: Aside from the whole mess every MOBA has to deal with, a couple gods are infamous for having abilities that can screw their teammates over.
  • Sobek can fling an enemy over his shoulder and knock everyone around him away from him. This is a LOT of moving the enemy around, which plays hell with allied gods trying to aim at them without good communication. Hercules does the exact same thing.
  • Freya has the only CC in the game that makes an enemy unattackable. It's also on a delay, so it's absurdly easy to save an enemy from your allies' ultimate if you're not directly talking to each other.
  • Anhur's Shifting Sands summons a pillar that is a notable version of this. While the pillar has a much smaller width than most walls, it makes it so that anyone who blocks with it must either be doing it deliberately or by pure luck.
  • Ne Zha also has an ultimate that carries an enemy into the air, essentially banishing them both while dealing damage to the enemy. Many a Ne Zha has overestimated their own damage and saved an enemy from a finishing blow.
  • Ymir, Thor, and Odin can create walls. This is exactly as powerful and exactly as tragic as it is in every other MOBA, possibly even more so since Ymir's can even block allies' line of sight and none of them can be dashed THROUGH, they must be leaped OVER (a much smaller pool of abilities). Incidentally a couple extremely powerful ultimates are dashes and a friendly wall will waste them just as an enemy one will. Odin's old ultimate was practically Jarvan IV's Cataclysm, so he can also trap entire team and then goes along with "I'm Odin. I'm helping." The new ultimate fixes that problem however by letting allies and himself pass through the spears. Though it can still be unhelpful if it bars the enemies to enter an ideal area where tons of damage can be unloaded more effectively to them. Still helping, folks.
  • Fenrir's ultimate (grab the enemy and carry them around) can be deadly if used correctly (like carrying the enemy under a tower) but you need to be aware of your teammates, otherwise you may set the enemy up to finish off a wounded team mate, especially if you drag them under the tower, since they'll die anyway.
  • Janus' portal, being similar to Freya's banish, renders its captured enemy invulnerable to damage while they fall through the portal. Without proper communication, Janus can save his enemy from your allies. The bright side is unlike Freya’s banish the portal does damage, so if the enemy is low enough on health it will be at worst just be a kill steal.
• Power Echoes: Nearly every single God in the game has some echoing layer added onto their voice.
• Power Floats: Several gods, such as Olorun, Ra, Aphrodite and Zeus, are always levitating in the air.
• The Power of the Sun: Sun gods from many cultures are playable, from the Egyptian Ra to the Japanese Amaterasu. Hou Yi is a weird case—while he is technically not a sun god, he does utilize the power of the nine suns he shot down.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: A lot of gods' backstories are glossed over and outright changed in order to make them more likable. Also some gods who otherwise have no described personality or powers are often given distinct traits and abilities that fit them, like with as Sylvanus and Awilix.
• Public Domain Artifact:
  • We already have Mjolnir and Gungnir belonging to Thor and Odin respectively, the Imperial Regalia (Kusanagi, Yata Mirror, Yasakani Jewel) in possession of Amaterasu, King Arthur's Excalibur (both the original and the parody by King Ar-Tyr), and Heimdallr’s sword Hofuo.
  • While most of the buyable items in the game are original creations, some are legit mythological artifacts: the Asi from Hinduism, the Rod of Ascelpius from Greece, the Stone of Fal from Celtic legend, and Fail-Not, Pridwen, and Arondight from Arthurian lore. An ancile from Rome and a Muramasa blade from Japan used to be in the game but were removed.
• Restart the World: Shiva does this upon his arrival on the battleground, ending the world and creating it anew in the Dharmic Era event. In a meta sense he also brings an end to the canon SMITE storyline that originated from the Pantheon War comics, allowing for a new continuity where self-contained short stories can be used instead of large Myth Arcs.
• Revenge: Some Gods' (mostly the evil ones) reasoning to enter the battleground is to exact vengeance to other participants that wronged them. Fenrir to Tyr that bound him, Arachne to Athena that turned her into a Spider Person (and tore her weaving), Medusa to Athena again for cursing her in the first place, Cabrakan to Xbalanque for tricking him into eating poisoned bird and 'dying'. Izanami is also a variation, she's out for her revenge against Izanagi, who is not playable when she's released, but her manner of revenge is practically 'Kill Everyone She Comes Across'.
• Scales of Justice: Nemesis is seen with them in her splash art and game play; such as when she's defeated. Two of her abilities also play with this trope "Scales Of Fate" and "Divine Judgement" with the scales seen in the abilities icon^note It's harder to see in the Divine Judgement icon..
• Scarab Power: Featuring many mythologies, obviously features this. In fact, a scarab is a part of the symbol for the Egyptian Pantheon, and Khepri himself is one of the deities in it now.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors: Janus's defeat animation shows him chasing a cyclops (and later running away from some sort of demon) through portals in this style.
• Sea Monster: Poseidon can summon the Kraken in his ultimate, though it’s actually a case of Sadly Mythtaken (the Kraken is not actually from Greek mythology). Several other playable gods are sea monsters themselves, including Scylla, Charybdis and Tiamat.
• Semi-Divine: Being a game about mythology, SMITE includes a number of playable demigods like Hercules, Cu Chulainn, Erlang Shen, Achilles and Gilgamesh.
• Shout-Out: An ungodly amount of them. Check the characters page for specifics.
  • Once one team is victorious, there's a chance that one of the winning minions will spin around on one side on the floor in triumph, which is likely a reference to Homer Simpson (though the originator of this motion was Curly of The Three Stooges).
• Silliness Switch: Not that the vanilla game doesn't have shades of this, but many of the purchasable god skins add a distinctly goofy quality to them, such as giving the Egyptian sun god Ra a very patriotic color scheme or turning Cabrakan into an oversized nerd smashing computer servers.
• Snakes Are Sinister:
  • Medusa, Apophis and Jormungandr are the ones playing it straight, being rather malevolent.
  • Nu Wa is an aversion, she has a snake-like form but she's one of the more benevolent Gods.
  • Kukulkan is snake-like and is the benign Top God of the Mayan Pantheon, but he can be quite a nasty jerk due to Blue-and-Orange Morality being in play.
• Spared By Adaptation: If there's a famous monster who's supposed to be killed later, this game excuses it with either the absence of the killer (Perseus, Sigurd and Jiang Ziya are absent to ensure that Medusa, Fafnir and Da Ji are still around), said monster not being killed hard enough (Bakasura came Back from the Dead because hunger is a concept that can't be erased), or their supposed death is modified so they survived (instead of being killed by the poison of the Hero Twins, Cabrakan went into a deep sleep).
• Spell My Name With An S:
  • The Chinese gods get this out of a few other examples; a huge majority of their names (save for Guan Yu, Ao Kuang and Sun Wukong) are both spelt apart, but are actually meant to be mashed. Chang'e is so far the only exception. Ao Kuang is subject to this in that his name is actually "Ao Guang".
  • Japanese gods get this too as per the usual "long vowels issue" with romaji, but in Susano's case, his name at the end isn't actually an extended vowel, for there's actually meant to be an extra "o" (often separated by an apostrophe, "Susano'o"). It gets left out in this game's spelling, oddly enough.
• Stripperiffic: Numerous Gods and Goddesses dress like this, though one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of them are already depicted as either being in revealing attire (if not skimpier or completely nude) in their own mythologies. While Hi Rez definitely uses this as an excuse to employ Fanservice, it's not as far-fetched and outrageously sexualized for no reason as many detractors would have you believe. Aphrodite is literally a Sex Goddess; so anything less than Stripperiffic would be unusual, Bastet is usually depicted as a woman with fur, and Kali and Freya actually did run around nearly naked (fully for Freya) in other depictions. Neith meanwhile is a different story, as her Naughty Nurse Outfit skin is actually less revealing than her default look, while Sol is literally stark naked. If they weren't Wreathed in Flames 24/7 with Barbie Doll Anatomy, the game would probably be rated Adults Only.
  • These days, the trope is getting inverted, as fans are more concerned with seeing Gods and Goddesses with different body types, instead of what's conventionally attractive, such as Bellona being more rough and muscular as opposed to pretty with a small waist and big boobs (as is the case with Aphrodite).
• Status Effects: Various gods' abilities cause varieties of Poison, Burn, Bleeding, Bees!, Silence, Blind, Sleeping (called Mesmerized), Paralyzed, Frozen, Slow, Fear, Decover...
• Stone Wall: Generally speaking, Guardians are meant to be this, but many of them can do decent damage and are instead Mighty Glaciers.
• Take That!:
  • In their official Twitter channel, they once posted an image of a giant stomping a human with the words, "What is A Legend to A God?"
  • They also took another shot against League of Legends in this video where there is a brief moment of a mother feeling shame over her son dressing up as Teemo. Then again, seeing that even the League community has no love for Teemo himself, this can be more like an affectionate remark on the whole Teemo hatedom instead of a potshot at League. Furthermore, said animator (Nevercake) is a freelance animator who has made some League-based animations in addition to the ones in Smite (Hi-Rez just sponsors his Smite-based animations in the channel), so it's more likely an affectionate remark on that hatedom.
• Top God: Several of the Pantheons have their Top God involved, specifically: Zeus, Ra, Odin, Kukulkan, Amaterasu, Yu Huang, and Olorun. Currently missing from the other pantheons are Vishnu for the Hindu Pantheon (though technically Vishnu is present through his avatars Vamana and Rama), Perun from the Slavic Pantheon and most likely The Dagda or Lugh from the Celtic Pantheon. The Roman Pantheon is currently the one with the largest issue of lacking theirs, since Jupiter's Greek counterpart, Zeus, is already represented, and the oldest one, Nox, was a primordial in the same vein of Chronos, so does not lead. Eventually, this is remedied with Discordia's lore stating that the Greek and Roman Pantheon are the same thing, so Zeus also doubles as Jupiter, leading both Pantheons.
• Total Party Kill: Known as "Deicide" around these parts.
• Two Aliases, One Character: The reason why Ancient Grome is at play: Zeus and Jupiter are considered the same thing, only spelled differently depending on where the lore is talking from. Apply this to other Greco-Roman deities. Outside that, Xbalanque is a latter incarnation of Awilix, but the two of them can be together in the same time. And then there's also the incarnations of Vishnu, Vamana and Rama (they are not all of Vishnu's incarnations, just the fifth and seventh respectively).
• Unexplained Accent: Various gods have accents that don't exactly come from their respective cultures. Isis, Serqet, Chang'e's Rabbit, and Janus have British accents for some reason, Tyr and Chiron have Scottish accents (and Chiron sounds like he's trying to channel Sean Connery), while Nu Wa and Ne Zha have American accents. Apollo has a British accent, but it's obvious he's supposed to resemble a Greek equivalent of a British Rock Star. Athena even has a Russian accent, and she lampshades this in one of her rare quotes. This is averted with the Hindu Gods however.
• Unstable Equilibrium: As is common for the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre, dying gives your enemy more gold and experience... which makes it easier for them to acquire more while making it more difficult for you to do the same once they go back and heal. However, unlike some other games in the genre, you still get gold from standing close enough to enemy minions dying (unless a turret hits it) - but you won't get as much as actually landing the killing blow on them. However, the higher your level, the longer your respawn timer. If a winning team does get deicided, the losers have a sizable window to take towers and even the playing field.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • For most people new to the game, the first couple times someone jumps through a wall trips them up. Even for those who are used to doing it in other MOBAs, the third person camera makes it so most people don't think about literally jumping through a wall.
  • Since dying to anything that's not an enemy god doesn't give the enemy team gold and you can't buy items or heal in Assault without dying first, it can be a good idea to use a global/semiglobal ultimate to bypass the enemy front line and get killed by say the enemy Titan. To rookie assault players this looks and sounds extremely stupid.
• Winged Humanoid: Many examples of this, including Nike, Jing Wei and Thanatos (who has four wings instead of two).
• World of Buxom: Not as extreme as fellow MOBA League of Legends, but still most of the females in Smite are very well endowed. Actually a rare Justified case considering most of them are goddesses, some of whose domains are in beauty and fertility.
• Yōkai: Currently two types of these creatures are represented in SMITE’s Japanese Pantheon: Kuzenbo the Kappa King and Danzaburou the legendary Tanuki.

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